Your Right to Know

By Lydia Polgreen and Alan CowellThe New York Times • Monday December 9, 2013 10:31 AM

JOHANNESBURG — South Africans began a week of commemorations for Nelson Mandela yesterday with a
day of prayer and reflection, gathering in places of worship, private homes and open fields to
offer spiritual homage to the man who embodied the battle against apartheid.

For the country’s politicians, it was a time to urge unity and continuity after the death on
Thursday of Mandela, who was 95.

But for others, the eulogies were filled with concern about the future, adding a sharper edge to
their prayers for peace in the post-Mandela era.

In the vast squatter camp of Diepsloot, where thousands of South Africans and immigrants from
neighboring countries live in tin shacks with no plumbing and often no electricity, people gathered
in tin-walled churches, under copses of trees and in open fields to offer prayers for Mandela.

“Thank you, Madiba,” a group of women from Zimbabwe sang a cappella in a meadow of wildflowers,
using Mandela’s clan name.

“Nelson Mandela was a leader chosen by God, and now God has called him home,” said Virginia
Sibanda, who has lived in Diepsloot for nearly two decades. “He was a leader not just for South
Africa but for all Africans, and the world.”

Many migrants living in Diepsloot fear that Mandela’s death will leave them more vulnerable to
the xenophobic attacks that have wracked the community in recent years. With rising crime,
joblessness and deteriorating living conditions, South African residents frequently have turned on
those from other countries. Mandela and his foundation had sought to reduce such violence.

In other parts of the world, people congregated to mark the death of a man whose long
incarceration and subsequent election as South Africa’s first black president inspired a following
far beyond his own land. At a service in London, the Most Rev. Justin Welby called Mandela South
Africa’s “saving grace.”

The week of memorials is to end Sunday with a state funeral in Mandela’s childhood village of
Qunu in the Eastern Cape region.

On Tuesday, tens of thousands of South Africans and many foreign dignitaries are to gather for a
national memorial here before Mandela’s body lies for three days at the Union Buildings — once the
emblem of the white establishment he helped to overthrow.

Yesterday, top central government and provincial officials appeared at churches and other places
of worship across the country.

At the Regina Mundi church in Soweto, the Rev. Sebastian J. Rossouw told congregants that
Mandela had offered a “guiding light” toward a better future, news reports said, “but he cannot do
it alone.”